Russia: A Part of Europe or Apart from Europe?

The controversial framework of interaction between Russia and Europe is defined by some enduring parameters—geographic realities, historical experiences, religious beliefs, normative values, psychological characteristics, behavioural patterns, cultural orientations. The incongruity between cultural/civilizational and geopolitical identities further complicates Russia's perceptions of, and attitudes to, Europe. Russia's initial pro-Western enthusiasm in the early post-Cold War period was soon overshadowed by serious difficulties in its adaptation to a reduced position in Europe, as well as by numerous grievances with respect to the West. As a result, Russia's attempts to develop a 'pan-European architecture', as well as its policy with regard to multilateral structures operating in continental Europe, have been marked by deeply contradictory patterns of promoting openness towards Europe on the one hand and keeping a certain distance from it on the other. The enlargement of NATO and especially recent NATO military operations in the Balkans have been perceived in Russia not only as confrontational but also as relegating it to the sidelines of European developments. Although Russia's long-awaited transition to the post-Yeltsin era and its new European perspective have been undermined by the war in Chechnya, President Putin's unexpected pro-Westernism (its pragmatism notwithstanding) is a promising sign of rapprochement with Europe.     

The Element of Sustainability in the Greek Statutory Spatial Planning System: A Real Operational Concept or a Political Declaration?

This paper focuses on the response of the Greek statutory spatial planning system to the concept and principles of sustainability. The query to be answered is the following: Have the structure, institutions, processes and instruments of the planning system been affected by sustainability principles and in what way? Furthermore, are there any public policy results contributing to sustainable development and attributable to spatial planning? Methodological approach is based on cross-examination of a group of assumed sustainability criteria on the one side and recent changes/transformations in the key-factors of the spatial planning system (institutions, processes, instruments) on the otherside. The approach is complemented by reverse direction considerations: in cases of operational processes leading evidently up to sustainability the responsible policy sector is acknowledged and any factual connection to spatial planning is addressed. The main conclusion is that for the time being sustainability objectives in strategic and top-down spatial planning in Greece rather perform the function of a political manifesto and 'legalize' traditional weaknesses than drive real development towards a sustainable course. The chances for operational success are expected slim in the near future and originate mostly from the European Union (EU) political and economic pressures, producing however fragmented, single-dimension (mainly environment conservation) results for which commitment of the involved societies has never been accomplished and confirmed.     

Modernization in Tibet: A Boon or a Bane for the Tibetans?

Thissoundsridiculous,butitisreallysomethingatissue.Intheworldtoday,therearepeoplewhoaredebatingonwhethermodernizationdriveshouldbecarriedinTibet.SomestandformodernizationinTibet.Theybolstertheirviewbyarguingthatsucheffortwillalsohelppromotedevelopmentoftraditionalcultureintheregion.However,therearealsopeoplewhowagtheirfingersatsucheffort,pointingoutthatitwillleadtodestructionoftradi-tionalculture.WhethermodernizationisgoodorbadtotheTibetansiscleartotheworldtoday.Inthisissue,wepublishFarmers…     

Revisionism in the Twentieth Century: A Bankrupt Concept or Permanent Practice?

Written in the wake of a critical incident which the author considers worrying and yet characteristic of the times we live in, this article contends that the conflation heretofore evident between critical historical thinking (revisionism) and negationism is ultimately harmful to the historical discipline since it can serve the interests of the deniers and indirectly grant an argument to radical postmodernists who demote history to a loosely constructed form of personal fiction. On the other hand, it also eschews the belief in historical scholarship as an immiscible category demarcated by impenetrable boundaries, which is habitually associated with empirical positivism. Furthermore, it argues strongly for the introduction of a diachronic perspective in the study of revisionism not only to show the steady process of professionalization of the discipline but to disclose an often neglected or denied aspect: its contribution to the evolution of philosophical thought.     

Agricultural Investment in Ethiopia: Undermining National Sovereignty or Tool for State Building?

The media discourse on recent agricultural investments — frequently referred to as the ‘global land grab’ — has been quick to label these deals as ‘neo‐colonial’, implying that these kinds of investments undermine national sovereignty. For the most part, the emerging academic literature on the ‘land grab’ has not critically examined this assumption. This article draws on the literature on state building and agrarian relations in Africa to construct a framework that can be used to analyse the impact of agricultural investment on state–society relations and state sovereignty. The article then uses this framework to examine the case of Ethiopia, illustrating how the Ethiopian state has directed investors to peripheral lowlands and, in doing so, has enhanced, rather than diminished, state sovereignty. As such, while the erosion of sovereignty is certainly one possible outcome of agricultural investment, it is by no means the only one, and is an assumption that should be subjected to critical analysis.     

Potter’s Wheel in the Iron Age in Central Europe: Process or Product Innovation?

The use of a rotational device for forming ceramic objects represents a fundamental innovation in pottery technology. This work addresses aspects of the transmission of this technological innovation on the basis of technological and provenance analysis of Iron Age pottery in a selected region of Eastern Bohemia. The possible trajectories of the innovative process are approximated specifically through the polarities between product and process innovation and transmission of cultural traits in open and closed learning networks. Apart from standard methods of petrographic and geochemical analysis, this analysis employs innovative methodology for identification of pottery-forming techniques. The results indicate the effects of various mechanisms of cultural transmission which shaped the evolution of techniques in the Iron Age society. The technological changes can be explained by shifting accents on product and process performance characteristics in changing selective environments.     

Objects and interactivity: A conflict or a collaboration?

The rapid growth in the number of hands‐on centres has led to fears of museums being taken over by interactive exhibits. These are expensive to develop and maintain, causing a problem for traditional museums faced with ever‐expanding collections and diminishing resources. This article considers whether objects and interactive exhibits are inevitably in conflict or whether they can coexist in harmony. The implications for future developments at the Science Museum in London are considered in detail.

The authors conclude that, far from conflicting with traditional museum functions, interactive exhibits and new technologies will help to ensure that museums are able to compete in an increasingly complex marketplace. Their vision of the interactive gallery of the future incorporates exhibits which enhance understanding of artefacts. In short, the objective will be to ensure that visitors interacting with ‘hands‐on’ exhibits will take away ‘minds‐on’ understanding of the museum as a whole.     

The oldest handaxes in Europe: fact or artefact?

Hominin presence is well documented in a number of Early Pleistocene and early Middle Pleistocene European localities. However, the evidence currently available indicates that Acheulean handaxes spread in the fluvial basins of Western Europe during MIS 11, ～400 kyr ago, associated with Homo heidelbergensis, although a number of early Middle Pleistocene Acheulean assemblages have been dated from MIS 16 onwards. For this reason, the magnetostratigraphic dating in Southeast Spain of two archaeological localities, the open-air site of Solana del Zamborino (SZ) and the rock-shelter site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Quípar (EQ), that put back the appearance of handaxes to the Early-Middle Pleistocene limit (Scott and Gibert, 2009) is of particular interest, as the new ages suggest that H. heidelbergensis was a contemporary of H. antecessor that had the ability to produce Levallois debitage and to control fire during the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition. However, we have detected a number of errors in the interpretation of the archaeological assemblage from the first site as well as striking discrepancies with the original faunal lists published for both localities, with several large mammal species that are omitted or arbitrarily changed to make the assemblages consistent with the new ages deduced from magnetostratigraphy. For this reason, we suggest that: (1) the finding of reverse polarity in the sediments sampled for paleomagnetism in SZ may simply record one of the polarity reversals that took place during the Brunhes Chron, although the use by Scott and Gibert (2009) of a composite stratigraphic column precludes correlating these levels with a specific reversal; and (2) the fauna and tools of EQ correspond to the late Middle Pleistocene sedimentary infillings of this karst site, while the samples taken for paleomagnetism belong to a previous sedimentary cycle during the Matuyama Chron. Such interpretations would be in better agreement with the age estimates provided by biostratigraphy and also with the currently accepted chronology for the appearance of Acheulean industries in Western Europe.     

Italy: A new language for a new politics?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the language used by the major actors in contemporary Italian politics. After a brief introduction, which lists the general questions posed by such an analysis, we examine the language of the pre‐1992 regime, which has been rather too hastily condemned as obscure and solipsistic. We then pass to the self‐consciously simple language of Bossi, who constructs a discourse of protest, and of Berlusconi, who offers a discourse of government. These lead to the very different, albeit sometimes complementary, languages of Prodi and D'Alema, which go beyond populism and open new political perspectives. Through these and other examples we examine the role of political language in a changing Italy.     

Bigamy: A Male Crime in Medieval Europe?

Crime is often gendered. This article argues that the crime of bigamy was a male crime in the fifteenth‐ and sixteenth‐century Catholic world. Courts prosecuted male bigamists far more often and more harshly than female offenders. However, drawing in particular on records from the fifteenth‐century bishop's court of Troyes, I argue that women also committed bigamy. Judicial and social gender biases identified only male bigamy as fully criminal behaviour.
The reasons for this gender difference lie in the different roles of spouses as prescribed in Christian law, theology and culture. For a man to commit bigamy fundamentally violated his responsibilities as a husband. Female bigamy, by contrast, was to an extent tolerated as a lesser evil. Better a woman have two living husbands, one present and one absent, than no husband at all.     

A Human Rights "Soul" for a Secular World of "Faiths": A Contradiction,or Just a Paradox?

Abstract

The critically important role of groups associated with the infant World Council of Churches in the process of introducing ‘human rights’ into the post-World War II international order, and then helping to define them in the Universal Declaration (1948), has been forgotten. It was asserted in those years that (at any rate Christian) faith is properly concerned with the inter-dependence of healthy religion and religiously neutral human-rights institutions. The principle was advanced, not only by Christians, that this conviction could be held in good conscience by any of the world-faiths. To open educational windows would increase knowledge of the beliefs of ‘the other’, and foster both self-criticism and mutual respect. This vision has been only very partially realised. Now, many difficult public issues spring from claims made by religious traditions, and many religious groups have rejected ‘universal’ human rights as a threat. This paper argues that the mutuality of religious faith and human rights needs to be re-enterprised urgently—and not only by elites—for the health of both and for the sake of containing violence. This is not a responsibility to which political authority—however religiously neutral—can or should remain indifferent.     

Cultural participation in Europe: shared problem or shared problematisation?

Europe has a ‘problem’; it is becoming a ‘less cultural continent’ as fewer Europeans are ‘engaging in cultural activities’. This conclusion has been reached due to the findings of the latest cross national cultural participation survey. This paper questions the existence of this ‘problem’ and instead suggests that there is a shared problematisation across Europe sustained by common discursive archaeology that employs various discursive strands in relation to a dominant institutional discourse. The argument is that the ‘problem’ of ‘non-participation’ legitimates a ‘solution’ that predates its emergence: the state subsidy of arts organisations. The paper recaps the comparable problematisations that the researchers have previously identified in the policy texts of their respective countries. It progresses to consider three distinct but interwoven discursive strands upon which the problem representation in both countries, and potentially across Europe, appears to rely.     

Community Archaeology: A Threat or an Opportunity for Greek Archaeology?

The development of archaeology in Greece has been determined by the central role classical antiquity played in the European and Greek imagination. Classical archaeology, with its aesthetic view of the material culture, has dominated the discipline and its popular perception ever since. The state has been entrusted with the exclusive authority on archaeological heritage because of its national importance. This paper argues that the combination of the classical and state monopoly has led to the isolation of Greek archaeology from the world and from the Greek people. The aim is to critically assess Greek archaeology and introduce community archaeology as a means to make archaeology relevant to the Greek people.     

Cross‐border cooperation: A major element in regional policy in East Central Europe

Borders in East Central Europe have become much more permeable over the past ten years as formalities have been simplified and many new crossing points have opened. At the same time cooperation in border regions has increased, thanks mainly to resourcing through EU ‘Inrerreg’ programmes, to include a range of business, cultural and conservation interests. In many cases these arrangements have been formalised through Euroregions which have become an indicator of good international relations. The paper reviews these trends with reference to examples and pays particular attention to environmental projects and the joint planning initiatives being undertaken in a number of the Euroregions. At a time when regional policy has been generally weak, cross‐border cooperation has contributed significantly to cohesion and it is also a good indicator of stability in the region. However, the impact has been greater in the north than in the Balkans and the first round of EU eastern enlargement will have implications for cooperation across the new external borders.